The Italian Competition Authority targets an alleged anti-competitive agreement in the market for financing of purchase of motor vehicles

In the Case I811 FinanziamentiAuto the Italian Competition Authority (ICA) has opened an Article 101 TFEU investigation against 10 captive banks owned by car manufacturers, - Banca PSA Italia, BMW Bank, FCA Bank, FCE Bank, GM Financial Italia, Mercedes Benz Financial Services Italia, RCI banque, Toyota Financial Services, Volkswagen Bank – and two professional associations, Assilea and Assofin.

The ICA opened the investigation upon the receipt of a complaint in March 2014, which was later completed with a second complaint filed in January 2017. The market affected by the anti-competitive agreement under scrutiny was the market for the consumer lending for the purchase of motor vehicles. The ICA’c concern is that that the captive banks periodically exchanged sensitive commercial information concerning the economic terms for lending applied by dealers to consumers. The exchanges took place via bilateral contacts, emails and phone calls, and multilateral meetings. The captive banks put in place the above arrangements since 2003 while the two professional associations joined it since 2014. What the ICA feared is that, by implementing the above depicted arrangement, the captive banks and the professional associations were liable to alter the correct working of competition in the relevant market.

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